Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership: WSP Engineering Consultancy, AWS Promote Digital Twin Cloud Services

WSP and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are collaborating in Australia to assist governments and the private sector with developing digital twins for complex infrastructure such as transport assets, buildings, bridges, and ports, the two companies said.

WSP is an engineering and professional services consulting firm. The company has roughly 5,000 employees across 14 offices in Australia. The overall company is headquartered in Montreal, Canada -- with 66,200 employees worldwide as of 2022.

A digital twin allows businesses and organizations to plan, visualize, report on and control assets and operations of physical, real-world infrastructure. WSP will leverage AWS IoT TwinMaker, an AWS service that makes it easier for software developers to create digital twins of real-world systems such as buildings, factories, industrial equipment, and production lines, the announcement disclosed.

Executive Perspectives: WSP, AWS Digital Twin Partnership

In a prepared statement about the relationship, Matthew Gallaugher, WSP’s director of digital, said: “Digital twinning allows for more sustainable and resilient infrastructure. One of the critical parts of making our cities Future Ready is connecting, analyzing, and visualizing assets in the digital realm. As such, we support the digital transformation of public and private sector organizations by gaining insights from data to help them optimize the planning, design, delivery, and operations of those assets. AWS IoT TwinMaker allows us to use data from multiple sources to create virtual representations of physical environments and combine existing 3D models with real-world data. AWS IoT TwinMaker is a great AWS service we use to create digital twins.”

Added Damien Cutcliffe, WSP’s director of digital business engagement and growth: “Leveraging the experience of local and international subject matter experts with decades of experience in building complex structures, gives us a unique edge in creating digital twins. WSP understands the fusion of engineering and technology required to design, build and maintain infrastructure – from an entire transport network to a tunnel and a bridge.”

AWS IoT TwinMaker vs. Microsoft Azure Digital Twins

Meanwhile, Amazon isn't alone in the Digital Twin cloud services market. Indeed, NTT DATA and e-Magic in January 2023 partnered to launch a sustainability application that leverages Microsoft Azure Digital Twins technology.